Collecting and processing data from remote sensing devices is known. Typically, a remote sensor remains in a fixed location, senses a particular condition for the given location, and provides the sensed condition to a central processing device. For example, in weather monitoring systems, a remote sensing device is designed to monitor temperature, wind, barometric pressure and other weather conditions. The sensed weather conditions are then provided to a processing device, which compiles the data to describe current weather conditions, predict weather changes, and issue warnings when the weather is dangerous in a given area. Other remote sensors may be used along rivers to monitor water levels, along pipelines to monitor the flow rate within the pipes, along geographic faults to monitor seismic activity, within buildings to monitor smoke, etc.
Regardless of the type of remote sensor, the remote sensors are geographically fixed in location and are relatively few in number. For example, a weather sensing system may include only a few (e.g., less than 10) sensors for an entire state. Typically, weather monitoring systems are supplemented with manual monitoring of weather conditions. Thus, if a weather condition arises in which the public is to be notified (e.g., a tornado), the remote sensors may or may not have sensed the weather condition, depending on their geographic relationship to the weather condition. In many cases of dangerous weather conditions, human sightings provide a significant portion of the data. When dangerous weather conditions are detected, notifying people in harm's way is not always effective. Typically, the public is notified of hazardous weather conditions by local radio and television broadcasts and neighborhood sirens. But, those who are not currently watching a local television broadcast, listening to a local radio program, or within earshot of the siren, do not receive the warning of the approaching danger.
In centralized data collecting systems that monitor environmental conditions, such as pollen count, radon gas levels, heat index, carbon monoxide, etc, the warning is determined based on fixed thresholds. The fixed thresholds are usually established based on average sensitivity to the particular environmental condition. For people more sensitive to an environmental condition, the nominal threshold may be too high. Thus, for these people, the normal warning levels may not be appropriate to protect their safety. To overcome this problem, a person may have an individual sensor that monitors a particular environmental condition and provides a warning based on a threshold set by the user. While this provides the user with current environmental condition levels of the location he or she is at, assuming the monitor is working properly, the user has no indication as to the environmental conditions of other locations.
Therefore, a need exists for a method and apparatus that allows for more detailed collection of data regarding environmental conditions and allows for feedback regarding the environmental condition to be provided to the public in a more customized manner.